> This is just taking “politically correct” to far. It’s like saying “Firemen” or “one small step for man..”. The context of “man” or “men” is obviously “person” or “people”

Er, no, it's not. In fact, in the popular “one small step for man” quote (“One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”), the intended phrasing was “a man”, it referenced the speaker (Neil Armstrong), a specific man (not a person of unknown and unspecified gender), and was contrasted with “mankind” which had the general sense.

> “one small step for man..”.

From the same magazine.

"Neil Armstrong's One Small Misstep"

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ezzmzj/what-neil-armstron...

Didn't Armstrong mean to say "one small step for a man", "a man" referring to himself? Surely even at maximum political correctness, nobody would object to saying that Neil Armstrong is, in fact, a man?

My understanding is that the preferred term now is "fire fighter", though I do hear "fireman" on occasion.